


Paradise Lost

by Sar_Kalu



Series: A String of W.I.P's [9]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, The Mummy (1999), The Mummy Returns (2001), The Mummy Series
Genre: AU, Dimension Travel, Good Guys, Magical Creatures, Mummies, Time Travel, and the quest to return home, bad guyes, post - 7th year, the potential for eternal damnation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-25
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-07-17 09:19:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16092671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sar_Kalu/pseuds/Sar_Kalu
Summary: Caught under heavy spell-fire and the shattered enchantments of a broken portkey, Ron Weasley and Harry Potter are pulled to a very different time and place.





	Paradise Lost

As the scarlet steam train rounded the bend, Ron Weasley was once again struck with the thought that maybe he should have gone with Hermione anyway. The ache in his left shoulder, however, had not abated despite the fact that well over six months had passed since the final battle between Harry and Voldemort. All around him, the faces of weary and hurting witches and wizards milled along the long platform, teeth biting lips in a display of fear and worry even though the past six months had been as quiet as Ron’s childhood. The memories of the near-past haunted them. The papers had been filled with picture after picture of people captured by Aurors and put to trial before the whole Wizengamot. The Ministry was in turmoil and, as Ron spun on his heel to travel to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement where Harry waited for him, Ron was determined to help fix things.

 

Eight months of travelling by foot and fear, shoulder blades itching with the feeling of spell-fire burning into him, Ron had learnt that there were far worse things than the loss of life and innocence. As he stepped down from the platform, his black robes flaring about his legs, Ron could remember the pinch of the cold rain that doused the Weasley clan on the day of Fred’s funeral. George’s wailing would have been stunning, had Ron not been privy to his older brothers screams each night. The way George had bolted upright howling Fred’s name and Ron had been left to pin George down, big hands gripping thin shoulders, and forcing George, again and again and again, to the realisation that Fred was never coming back, that Fred would never again come home.

 

That George was alone.

 

The Ministry was pockmarked and blackened with burns and blemishes. Ron could remember running through these halls, age fifteen and scared out of his mind. Tentacles from the brains burning ribbons through his flesh and muscle. Screams from his friends, the shouts of the Death Eaters that chased them. The cacophony of curses and charms colliding with crumbling stone, the hiss of burning steel melted into slag and slurry, and the bright clear shatter of glass above them, showing down like rain.

 

Standing in the elevator that had once carried Ron as Reg Cattermole, a muggleborn who’s wife had been murdered by Umbridge, Ron felt the press of memories against his skin. The stares of the people in the elevator with him burned like accusation and the hairs at the nape of his neck lifted and raised, his breath coming short, sharp and swift as he kept his eyes fixed straight ahead.

 

The elevator door ‘dinged’ as Ron stepped out and he found Harry standing stiff backed and straight against the wall as Aurors milled around him, offering him drinks, food, conciliations, assurances, and above all, praise. Whispers of gladness followed Ron as he waded through to Harry’s side and together they stood, silent, waiting for Shacklebolt’s arrival.

 

“Ah, Ron, Harry,” the new Minister greeted them, his smooth deep voice eager for all that the rest of him was calm and composed. “This way please,” Shacklebolt guided them from the milling press of Aurors and towards his old office.

 

Harry strode more than walked these days. Months of clamouring for his attention had taught the once-shy youth to hold his head up high, green eyes still and steady behind his glasses. Ron walked in time beside him, shoulders level with the shorter man, red hair now long enough to brush his collar and with a grim look upon his face.

 

They had walked like this once before, towards a new start, a new chance; eleven years old and about to be sorted for the first time. The Great Hall had been loud to their young ears, so big, so massive, they had felt tiny and overwhelmed and now here they strode, down the long hallway from the Auror bullpen towards the Head Auror office where Shacklebolt led them. Between one step and the next, Ron could almost feel the ghosts of their younger selves in step with them, youth and wide eyed fear turning to still-youth and dead eyed stares.

 

The formalities, for all the build up of waiting until they were eighteen years old and able to become trainees with the full support of the Ministry, were summed up with the signing of a few bits of paper and the swearing of an oath or two. Ron felt the whole business was anticlimactic. The rush and the wait, in the end, finished not with a bang but a scratch of ink laden metal upon rough parchment.

 

“We’re Aurors, then?” Harry asked, his voice dull.

 

Shacklebolt’s shoulders were loose beneath the midnight colour of his robes and the smile of welcome he gave them was more victorious than easy. “You’re Aurors now,” Shacklebolt assured them both in that deep, low voice of his.

 

“Good,” Ron expressed, feeling less victorious and more like he’d just jumped from a cliff to find that it was more of a step, after all.

 

Shacklebolt stood and gestured that they follow him again and they made that long, lonely walk back to the Auror bullpen where the Aurors stood waiting for them with anxious faces. In all, there were maybe fifty people waiting there and Ron felt the losses of the past three years hit all the harder for the absence of their friends that should have been standing there with them.

 

“Potter, you’ll be with Lafille,” Shacklebolt said, gesturing to a tall, broad shouldered woman with olive skin and nearly black eyes. Then he turned to Ron and waved him to a thin, weedy man with a pencil moustache and watery blue eyes, “Weasley, you’ll be with Pettigrew,” and at Ron’s tight jawline, Shacklebolt hastily explained, “not closely related to the Pettigrew you knew.”

 

“Don’t lie, Shack,” Pettigrew’s surprisingly deep voice interrupted, “Peter was my Uncle, older brother to my father. His death was why I originally joined the department,” and here Pettigrew’s expression turned ugly, “imagine my disgust when it turned out that Uncle Peter was a Death Eater all along.”

 

Ron’s blue eyes remained icy but he nonetheless accepted Pettigrew’s explanation. “Of course,” and he managed to dredge up the manners to finish with, “sir.”

 

“Get the recruits kitted out,” Shacklebolt told the senior Aurors before retuning to his office and the piles of paperwork that awaited him therein.

 

Harry disappeared with Lafille, his shoulders and back still straight with his determination; while Ron joined Pettigrew at his desk and ran through all the spell and curses he knew, working out a plan for his training. It would be a long road before he could call himself a fully qualified Auror, but it was one that Ron was determined to walk.

 

The moment he first pulled those scarlet robes over his broad shoulders and buckled the black belt around his waist, was a moment of dulled pride. Beneath the robes, Ron wore a plain white button-up shirt and soft, black cotton trousers that tucked into ankle high black boots. His and Harry’s pictures hung side by side on the ‘active duty’ wall and whenever he walked passed them, Ron couldn’t help but notice the darkness and weariness that haunted their eyes. The way that his and Harry’s photos were so much less lively in comparison to the photos of their peers around them.

 

Ron barely noticed the passage of time, marking weeks and months by the exchange of letters between himself and Hermione. His days were filled with the splash of spell-fire against wards and shields, the dance of footsteps against soft training mats, and the way that Harry’s expression got harder, crueller, and the way his own slowly grew to mirror Harry’s in the reflection of his friends glasses.

 

The call for aid happened not long after Ron had earned the scarlet hood of a fully trained Auror - a full year after his entrance into the Corps. He and Harry had earned something of a reputation among their colleagues and whispers abounded of how _easy_ it must have been for them to defeat Voldemort. How easy it must have been for Harry to walk to his death, for Ron to have rallied an entire battlefield side-by-side with Neville and Hermione and Ginny; for them to have killed Death Eater after Death Eater, never mind that those Death Eaters had been parents, classmates, even friends.

 

Ron would listen to those whispers at his desk, eyes upon Harry’s blank face and dearly wishing that he could curse those who said such stupid things.

 

The call had come from William Weasley, who had reached out to Shacklebolt in the wake of the Egyptian Ministry washing their hands of Gringott’s latest project and the Goblins withdrawing from the site in favour of shoring up their position in England. Bill had been hiring help from the locals, but reportedly disaster had struck when the crypt had all but exploded from the force of an ancient curse and now Bill was left holding down what was left of his mission with two injured curse breakers.

 

“They need guards,” Kingsley told Harry and Ron gravely, “normally I would not send help out to the cursebreakers of Egypt, but Bill asked a favour as an order member - he has a wife and daughter to think of, he needs to return home. It’s just for a few days, get in, get the curse breakers out, and then home again.”

 

Harry took the portkey from Shacklebolt’s desk and spun the pitted dagger in his hands, “this is the portkey Bill sent?” He checked, inspecting the ancient object for curses.

 

“Yes,” Kingsley relaxed in relief as Harry accepted his task, “thank you Harry, Ron.”

 

“What happens if we find no one there?”

 

Kingsley met Ron’s worried gaze, “then you leave. Immediately.”

 

“Right,” Harry agreed, a spark of life lighting up his dulled green gaze; as it always did when they were set to run into a spot of trouble and adventure.

 

Ron spun on his toes and followed Harry from the office, neither farewelling Shacklebolt and instead making tracks to the Auror offices to stock up for their journey. The Ron and Harry version of the Auror kit included a clean set of clothes, medical supplies, a pouch that was expanded to included a full larder of foodstuffs, another pouch that included a miniature potions lab -complete with cauldron, knives and ingredients for most healing and regeneration potions-, and secondary wands in specially reinforced sleeves that prevented snapping should the worst happen. The standard version didn’t include even half of what Ron and Harry deemed necessary - but then most Aurors rarely got involved in the shenanigans that Ron and Harry had experienced from age Eleven.

 

Ron made a mental note to send Hermione a bouquet of flowers the minute he returned to England for her charming of the wallet sized pouch that all the other expanded pouches fitted into. For those alone, Hermione was set to be awarded her Charms mastery.

 

Ron watched as Harry ducked into his third desk drawer and leveraged open the false bottom where a secret compartment was hidden beneath piles of old paperwork. From within, Harry drew a small hourglass on a thin, golden chain and hung it around his neck, tucking it beneath his shirt.

 

“Just in case,” Harry said seriously and Ron nodded.

 

“Good idea.” Ron slipped a hand into his own secret compartment and pulled out a silver dagger and tucked it into his belt.

 

Harry narrowed his eyes at the dagger, thinking the ruby set into the hilt looked awfully familiar. “The sword of Gryffindor?” He asked.

 

Ron smirked, “Neville sent it to me. Broke into the Headmistresses office.”

 

Harry snorted, “we’ve been a bad influence on that man,” he commented.

 

“Killed the snake,” Ron offered by the way of absolution, knowing that eleven year old Neville Longbottom never would have ever considered that one day he would be a hero.

 

“True,” Harry granted as he led the way down the the Ministry approved portkey point.

 

Shacklebolt had cleared their passage ahead of time, leaving them a note to inform them that he’d let their families know they’d be back from assignment in a few days. Ron turned to face Harry and held his hand out, “shall we, Mister Potter?” He grinned at Harry in rare good humour.

 

“We shall, Mister Weasley,” Harry snorted as he laid the dagger haft in Ron’s hand. “Hold tight,” Harry reminded Ron just before he said Bill’s ridiculous passcode: “magic carpet.”

 

With the familiar feeling of a hook behind his navel, Ron watched the British Ministry of Magic disappear into a rush and whirl of colour.

 

Harry and Ron landed flat on their backs in the middle of what was quickly becoming a war-zone. Spell-fire flashed over head in a multihued rush of light, splashing against stone and sand and body. Rolling to his feet, Ron ran to the closest overturned stone for cover, while Harry dashed in the opposite direction, his wand already out and weaving a long complicated knot of charms-work. The towering pillars of stone shone gold in the high noon light and Ron spun in a circle as he ducked beneath a sickly yellow curse and then vaulted over a knocked over pylon, his boots hitting the sand and kicking up dust as he spotted his older brother hunched over two fallen bodies.

 

“Bill!” Ron swung low, wand moving a deadly dance as he slung a vicious curse back to the tomb raiders that huddled in a knot of bodies near the crushed doorway of the crypt entrance. The heat shimmered around them like a violent wave and Ron watched Bill as he tried to staunch the bleeding of his colleague’s head. “Here, Bill,” Ron snapped, sparing a few moments to enchant a long snake of off-white rope and slung it over his brother and the other curse breakers, trusting Harry to have his back.

 

Then, as the air behind him boiled, Ron ducked once more behind a thin, stone wall and shot a series of nasty curses that curdled blood, boiled blood, and would explode fleshy bodies across the sand behind them. Not waiting to see if any of the spells hit their targets, Ron twisted around long enough to meet Bill’s pained gaze, and then before he could second guess his decision, screamed at the top of his lungs:

 

“FREEDOM!”

 

Bill’s shout was cut off as the portkey activated and whisked the three curse breakers away from harm.

 

Ron watched as Harry sprinted towards him, his face a stay of determination as long legs traversed the hard packed sand and Ron, knowing what his friend was about to do, flung himself bodily forwards, lunging towards Harry with desperation. Reaching under his shirt, Harry pulled out the little portkey meant to look like a time-turner that would take them to Hermione’s side where she would be able to get them to St Mungo’s immediately thereafter.

 

Colliding with Harry with a heavy thump, Ron grabbed ahold of the thin chain even as Harry shouted the passcode that would activate the portkey - but the tomb raiders had spotted their actions and a violet spell collided with the active portkey and split the enchantments asunder.

 

Before either Ron or Harry could let go, the magic took hold and stuck them firmly in place, the muscles in their hands spasming as they tried to release only for the damaged portkey to pull them along.

 

The world vanished under a rush of whirling light and colour - and they were never seen again.

 

Far to the north, Bill Weasley and his two colleagues landed with a heavy thump in the Ministry’s atrium upon cold marble floors. It would take hours before anyone realised that Ron and Harry weren’t returning - by that point the raiders had long since disappeared and there was no trace at all of Britain’s lost heroes.


End file.
